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Updated: June 25, 2025
With the help of a little electric lamp, we were able to look about us. The first thing that met my eyes was the library. There stood the Framheim library, and it made the same good impression as everything else books numbered from 1 to 80 in three shelves. The catalogue lay by the side of them, and I cast my eye over it.
It was on January 25, 1912, that we came into Framheim after our successful journey to the Pole. This was not the only time our calculations proved correct; Captain Nilsen showed himself to be a veritable magician in this way. While I contented myself with reckoning dates, he did not hesitate to go into hours.
That was a difference that could be felt, and not an unpleasant one; we had had more than enough of -40°. It was curious weather that night: violent gusts of wind from the east and south-east, with intervals of dead calm just as if they came off high land. On our way northward that day we passed our flag No. 6, and then knew that we were fifty-three miles from Framheim.
The room looks dark now that the great sun under the ceiling is extinguished; the two lamps that are now alight are good enough, but one seems, nevertheless, to have made a retrograde step towards the days of pine-wood torches. By degrees, then, the vikings began to retire to rest. My description of the day's life at Framheim would be incomplete if I did not include this scene in it.
We all collected in a mass below the ridge sledges and dogs mixed up together. The last part of the way was rather hard work. We now found the tracks that we had lost early in the day; one dried fish after another stuck up out of the snow and led us straight on. We reached Framheim at seven in the evening, half an hour earlier than we had thought.
I was interrupted in my studies by a glistening face, which was thrust through the wall just as I was going to dig my spade into it. It was Wisting, pioneer of the Framheim tunnel. He had good reason to be glad he escaped with his nose safe and sound. In another instant I should have had it on my spade. It was a fine sight, this long, white passage, ending in the high, shining dome.
His greatest sorrow on the voyage was that, on arriving at the Barrier, he would be obliged to hand over his treasure to the shore party. He could not understand what we wanted with a sewing-machine at Framheim.
She had been let loose sixty-eight miles from Framheim on the last trip. When she came in, she was as fat as ever; probably she had been feasting in her solitude on one of her comrades. She was received with great ovations by her many admirers. On September 29 a still more certain sign of spring appeared a flight of Antarctic petrels.
This contained three ordinary ship's chronometers. We had, in addition, six chronometer watches, which we wore continually, and which were compared throughout the whole winter. The meteorological instruments found a place in the kitchen the only place we had for them. Lindström undertook the position of sub-director of the Framheim meteorological station and instrument-maker to the expedition.
Hanssen and Wisting, as a rule, were a long way ahead, unless they stopped and waited. We went at a tearing pace. We had thought of halting at the sixteen-mile flag, as we called it the mark at thirty kilometres from Framheim and waiting for the others to come up, but as the weather was of the best, calm and clear, and with our tracks on the way south perfectly plain, I decided to go on.
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